Of Smoke and Sand

By Alvin Farrar

Of Smoke and Sand deals with the lives and events surrounding the fictional Badaraque Plantation in Baldwin County Alabama beginning in 1835 until falling victim to the Civil War.  There is travel by three masted schooner from Philadelphia to New Orleans and by steamboat to St. Louis. A train ride then takes us to the Black Hills of Montana which concludes the book.  It was early a time of wealth and peace but also a later time of great violence. It should surprise no one that appear both in the Indian's world as well as ours. 

 Mr. Farrar was born in Canoe Alabama in 1951 and moved to Atmore in 1958 where he graduated from Escambia County Highschool. His parents were F. H. Farrar and Carolyn Walker Farrar. He holds degrees from both Auburn University and UAB in Microbiology and Medical Technology.  His wife of forty-five years reside in Luverne, Alabama with a multitude of cats and a dog.

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It's 1873. Your memory is clear as a bell. You were there to watch your godchild race her horse a quarter mile on the Le Champs de Blanc Plantation track , while Judge Phillips bet a small fortune in gold on his daughter's horse.  You were there to watch the bidding at the Mobile Docks when the Corissa unloaded her last run with a hull full of African slaves.  Watching Genevieve marry the man of her dreams was a must as her long white trail flowed like a waterfall down the staircase behind her.  You watched a wealthy planter behave as a spoiled child and you stepped in to confront him.  There was a rape in the barn that was hidden for years. Occasionally cannon fire from Fort Morgan flashed brilliantly white and smoke drifted out over the bay as the shells screeched overhead toward a Yankee gunboat. Pirates, long thought extinct, make another return with disastrous results. Indians attempt to regain land lost and are set for a final showdown with the army.  Sweeping landscapes, lost and found loves, a murder mystery on a train, and quite naturally, some time on a steamboat up the Big Muddy.  Join me in this grand journey of sails, rails and cotton bails.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636925820

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Of Smoke and Sand

Alvin Farrar

Copyright © 2021 Alvin Farrar

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-63692-581-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63881-356-9 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63692-582-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Africa

Baldwin County, 1835

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Harbor

St. Louis

Indian Trouble

Lady in the Hat

This book is, first of all, dedicated to Shiela, who supplied the constant encouragement to continue. Next I include my son, Walter, who made me aware of Gmail and clouds. My sister was a depth of knowledge in genealogy and all things cotton. My wife, Myriam, kept the home fires burning without a chance of hunger

Prologue

This is, first of all, the story of the lives and events occurring around the Badaraque Plantation in Baldwin County, Alabama. It is how I found things to be beginning in pre-Civil War days and running up until 1873, when our trip through the West to tour a new railroad spur ended. My name is William Reynolds, and at the time this was written, I had taken control of the C & RC Railroad out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. My son and I were set to visit the newly laid tracks, barring any troubles with the Indian tribes, and attend local celebrations designed to promote passenger service and increase freight on the new rail line. I am the godfather of one of the Badaraque’s children and have been given their permission, as well as the inclination, to tell their story as best as I am able. I have visited the area often, both before and after the war. Any errors of recall or omission of pertinent facts from trusted sources are mine and mine alone. Many concurrent events were lost to history and will never be fully known. In certain situations, it is probably better left as such.

Chapter 1

Africa

Kahinah and Quido were fishing with long bamboo poles they cut from the bank of the Kauffo River, which flowed smoothly through the forest of Benin into the Gulf of Guinea. This was their favorite spot to fish, where the bank was not covered in jungle and a large mahogany tree gave plenty of shade.

How many do we have? Kahinah asked.

Quida, the younger brother, beamed as he held up the stringer of vundu catfish so Kahinah could count the fish. There were seven on a strong cotton cord they had found in a bush, but two very big ones had broken a second line of twisted yucca bark and gotten away.

That looks like plenty to me. Mama will be happy, Kahinah said.

Quida, nodding under a wide straw hat, thought so too and stepped in the shallow water to untie the cotton line holding the fish. Two steps into the water, his left bare foot touched something odd just underwater, which then moved away when he kicked at it. As it rolled over, he saw that it was covered in moss and might be a coconut, so with his free hand, he reached down to lift it.

Kahinah, I think I have another surprise for Mama.

He had it gripped tightly and could see that as it rose in the water, the moss looked more and more like hair. Moreover, it felt too soft to be a coconut. He had it halfway out of the water when he saw most of a nose hanging from what now was clearly a face.

Kahinah! he screamed.

Dropping the stringer of fish as he pulled his fingers out of the hair, he ran up the bank and leaped over a log to safety. Kahinah, seeing only the dropped fishline, yelled at him for dropping it and, jumping into the water, saw the line lying across the bloated face of a man. Turning in midair and without losing a step, he scrambled to join Quida now sitting on a big log on the wet bank and peeking at him through his knees.

You found a man’s head! That’s Uncle Bokata’s head! he whispered.

Unable to speak, Kahinah pointed down in the water. He turned to Quida to tell him to get a limb, but Quida was already in full retreat on the path home, running and crying out for Mama.

The sharp smell of woodsmoke drifting just over the top of the river then caught Kahinah’s attention. Worse yet, he noticed the warm and inviting brown water now began to turn a bloody red. Horribly, it was flowing down and around the rocks on his side of the Kauffo. Having only seconds to act if he wanted to save their string of fish flopping among the roots of the giant tree, he sprang into action. A strong limb was what he needed, and he found one that had broken jaggedly and fallen just behind him. It still had Quida’s sandwich on it, since he had given no thought to eating.

Kahinah looked down and saw the water turning pink with his bare feet inches away. The hair of his uncle’s head was twisted with the cotton fibers of the fish stringer. He lifted the limb and dragged it to the very edge of the river. His breath was heavy now from the weight of the limb and his fear of blood. It, the limb, was barely long enough to snag the line, and he felt he could save the fish. As he tugged, however, a section looped over and caught his uncle’s closest ear, causing his head to roll over toward Kahinah. The water was shallow here, and as he looked, he saw his uncle’s eyes begin to open.

Uncle Bokata was still alive and was searching to find Kahinah’s eyes!

He looked like there was something he desperately wanted Kahinah to know.

At this time, a large dark-green snake that looked like a tongue crawled out of his uncle’s mouth and swam under his knee. Kahinah jumped straight up in the air and dropped his limb. No fish were coming home tonight, he figured.

Wait up, Quida! he yelled at the back of his brother as Quida disappeared ahead of him on the path home through the darkest part of the woods. He now could barely make out the sounds of drums from upriver as he felt the twigs and river rocks under his bare feet. The river was now red along both banks. He was glad they did not fish where they had to cross in the shallows. He could sense something very evil was afoot. Mama would fuss at him for leaving his shoes hanging on a branch until she heard their story. No mind. He still had his straw hat on, and he tightened the noose as he picked up speed, trying to catch his younger brother.

His face was wet from tears as Wakimba heard his wife, Suzeeta, bring him his supper. He, as headman, had to be strong. So he dried his eyes and waited on her to come out.

The forest is too quiet tonight, Wakimba observed as he pulled up another chair beside him for Suzeeta to sit in. Suzeeta, though, could hear the faint sound of drums coming from some distance as she came out to feed Wakimba. He was growing old, and his hearing was not what it had been in his early days, when he led troops into battle with the government Army. However, she was not about to correct this good man. She handed him a wooden bowl of rice pudding and sat down beside him. She waited a few minutes so he could get started on his pudding, because his appetite had not been keen the last few months. Finally, she broke the silence.

Is it true, Wakimba? she asked. What the boys told us about your brother? Everyone wants to hear from you. Suzeeta rarely talked on the porch. When she did, it was usually about someone in the village that needed a favor from Wakimba but was too afraid to ask him. Wakimba could get many things done if Suzeeta insisted. Tonight, she led out with a question everyone was asking. What is wrong with the river? It was bringing down signs of trouble. She was thinking about a terrible night in her home village of Wachutu when she was small and had been sent with a clean bucket to get water. When the screams began, she waded across the river and hid until daylight. She had never mentioned that night to him, but he knew of it. Instead, she told him of the boys’ story of Bokata’s head in the nearby river. Quida was still crying and did not want her to go outside and leave him alone.

Wakimba waited until she was finished talking. He wished to think a minute before he told her what a great worry this was to him. If he wanted to send a message to a few villagers, she was the way to do it. If he told her not to repeat it, you could not pry it from her with a banana knife. What he had to say involved the village, and they had a right to know. No, they needed to know.

Last night, Wakimba sat out in his bamboo chair and listened to the not-so-distant drums that passed through his area of responsibility. The drums spoke of invaders, and tonight there were no drums that he was aware of. This was a bad sign. Seven miles was about as far as drums could be heard.

Wakimba stood up. I will speak to the village, he told Suzeeta and walked down the steps to the open area. He had only eaten half of his bowl of rice pudding, and she noticed it. Suzeeta stayed up on the porch so she could listen out for Quida. Wakimba had a metal drum in the village opening, and he hit it several times with a heavy boat paddle. This was the way to call a local meeting but not to speak to other villages with the talking drum.

When all arrived, he sat on the bare ground and spoke. First, he listed the things he knew. Groups such as the Imbangala in Angola had lately been seen ten miles north and were working west. They had two full chains of prisoners and would not be able to handle any more. However, sometimes they were sent more chains by the new government. When the government money was low, as was usual, and they were involved in a war with a neighboring country, it was time to worry. All ways of how they would be raising more money would be used.

Wakimba stopped speaking for a minute, then looked at each man in turn. We should be fine if they are heading to the port in Muganda, although I fear the slave groups less than the government. As all the slavers know, whoever attacks us will receive a vicious welcome. We will fight them again and again and have so far defeated them. My brother killed three Okumbi trying to overpower our father. It is good to have a bad reputation sometimes. My brother and I are of the same mind. I went to the place where my sons saw his head. It was my brother. The slavers are attempting to scare us into submission. For all our sakes, and for Bokata’s memory, everyone, sleep with your machete tonight.

The meeting being over, everyone headed back to their homes.

Wakimba went on to tell Suzeeta that he would stay up to watch. He sat on a stool in a large banana tree clump, where he could see the trail leading into the village.

It was after the moon rose that they stole into camp. All had machetes, and a few had guns. More and more guns were showing up since the money had become so large and the guns so much better than the old muzzleloaders. A signal gunshot from a man simply called the Black Butcher hit Wakimba on his shoulder right where he sat. It cracked the silence, and the village was rushed from all sides. Every man that could rise off his bed did so and grabbed his weapon. It was like an ant mound that had been kicked. The tribesmen poured out of their huts and began to engage. They were brave and strong, but they were no match for the slavers, who wished to capture them without injuries. Slavers were prepared to use their superior weapons.

Soon, after several were shot, including Wakimba, who was struck in the upper arm, the battle was finished. The men were herded into the open square in the center of Alada. Black Butcher stepped on top of the drum barrel. Do not fight us, men of Alada. You make matters worse. Then a sergeant who had just issued his order to the village in fluent French walked up to a man who was struggling to stay out of the chain and shot him in the head. The chains went on easily after that.

Though Wakimba was shot, it was not so bad that he couldn’t walk, and he was put at the very first spot on a new chain. The march to the closest port began immediately, for the sergeants who were leading were eager to get paid. The clanking of chains and the shouted threats made good with whips passed just a foot below Quida’s feet as he watched them file by under his perch in the neighbor’s giant baobab tree. Kahinah was supposed to meet him here, like they talked about if the bad people came. Now he watched as chains that went from one neck to another man’s hands passed by. One after another, fellow tribesmen he knew walked under his tree shackled. Then he spotted Suzeeta and, two men later, Kahinah. Kahinah glanced upward into the baobab tree for just a second and saw his brother had made it to safety.

Quida watched as his whole family left with these strangers. Leaving, the slavers burned the village, leaving the dead where they lay. The posts holding up the walls smoked for several days and were visible from the Gulf, where the captain of the Corissa lay anchored. His destination was the Gate of No Return, and any boat that was on their approved list to take slaves could use the harbor. In this case, it would be the Corissa, which is maiden in Greek. She could hold 220 slaves and was trading on behalf of Portugal. A fortune lay chained to the hull inside, but there was room for more. However good the money, the slaver crews onshore spoke of greener pastures. Of villages that surrendered entirely. Where money fell from the sky and the women were all beautiful.

Let us unload and get some sleep. Tomorrow we go northwest. This from a man satisfied only with full boats. Filthy boats packed with over two hundred of some sick, some criminal, and some of Africa’s finest citizens all forced into the hull of the ship.

There had been a half-hearted effort to clean the boat at the last port when it was empty. The captain sent his longboats ashore to load them with white beach sand to scrub the inside of the hull. Then it was carried back out and dumped overboard. The stench increased ten times downwind. Even so, it was a losing battle against the rot and putrid smell.

The wind was light coming in from the Gulf, and Kahinah smelled the rotten Corissa before it came into sight. A noxious blend of raw sewage and death. The kind of smell that could kill a man just by being exposed to it, and some did die. But it didn’t stop the slavers from their jobs as they led the chained men and the unchained women and children below into the hull. Children could wander about freely and were favored because they took up less space, and the regulators went by the total weight of the cargo. If it was possible to carry the same weight with only children and get a good price for them at auction, a small fortune could be made.

The enter the area belowdecks. The walking chains were switched out to irons attached to the floors and walls of the ship. Overhead bunks were built so that more slaves could be carried. The one advantage of the bunks was to be higher than most of the fleas. Fortunately, Wakimba had a lower chain so that Suzeeta could dress his wound with strips of her dress. The ones below them suffered worse, 15 percent of whom would die and begin to decay. If they were beside you, and if you were lucky, a crewman would come along and toss the dead man overboard. Food was scarce, but that made for less diarrhea. The journey was usually several months, but it felt endless. If the weather was bad, the movement of the ship increased the pain of the irons. In severe weather, it was not unheard of to find hands in the bilge. Even crew members would sicken of the work, and some would commit suicide. Easily the most hideously contrived means of relocating that number of people that inventive minds of man could produce. Pictures of what was once painted to show what hell looked like were no longer as nightmarish.

Lisbon, Portugal, noble Lisbon, was now irretrievably stained from the trade of slavery. They started a cancer that spread like wildfire—chattel slavery.

The European method had been to control resources, like large tracts of lands, for which they were entitled to a percent of the profit. Chattel slavery allowed men to be owned as property. A whole new way of viewing life that only death could end.

With a favorable trade wind and following current, the Corissa made a trouble-free passage past Puerto Rico and Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1808, international slave trade was forbidden, but it carried on with little outcry from the press or the general public. The planters were relieved each time another boat sailed in, so staying offshore to escape undue notice was not needed, but some captains felt it prudent.

Though not as active as other ports, Mobile had its share of slave traffic. They rounded Fort Morgan at night and entered the bay without any notice. Only the crew members on deck were able to gaze at the quiet cannons that, sleeping, but still visible, stared out of the fort walls like hatless abandoned children. The Corissa was a majestic ship in its early days of carrying casks of fine Portugal brandy to the Eastern Seaboard ports. It still looked impressive after a new coat of paint and a fresh set of sails had it running with the wind and passing at a respectable distance. The seagulls, always curious, were flying overhead, looking down at the ship, in hopes it was full of shrimp. Reliably, around dawn, when the crew and all the slaves were waking early, came the unforgiving scream of the ship’s scrub rails rubbing against the dock posts. Occasionally, even easy docks that went perfectly could be heard clear across a glassy, smooth bay and up into town as far as the post office. This brought crew members scrambling and shouting directions to the dockworkers where they wanted the lines to be wrapped.

Kahinah, now about to be released from foot irons, looked hard and found Wakimba’s face in the darkness of the ship’s hull. He was looking right at Kahinah and felt his strength.

By early morning, they were tied securely, and the crew was handing out pamphlets to the plantation managers of what they would be offering. Two men had been pushing a small speaking platform out on the pier, but looking around, they came to a sudden stop. A man with a large top hat hopped out of a wagon, yelling to them where it should be placed, but clearly they did not understand a word he said. The crew of the boat began unlocking the irons attaching the wrists and necks. Most had open wounds from the tight fit, and flies were beginning to gather. At this time, some of the insane crew members fled down the walkway, and most would never be heard from again. It was also the time when sane men, realizing what they had done, jumped to their death. Many captains extended netting out from the sides of their ships to catch any jumpers. But jumpers couldn’t get to the ship’s railing unless they had a lot of chain. Most slaves would not have been strong enough to climb over a railing either. No, the jumpers were crew members, and the netting was their way to keep them from becoming jumpers.

Kahinah came up out of the hold into the blinding sunlight, rubbing his wrist. He looked down into the water below the pier and saw the tide line. Just as the salt and fresh waters resist mixing, so too did these cultures. He took a giant gulp of refreshing, clean air into his lungs. The journey that literally made his hair turn white was finished. Kahinah reached down to pick up a pamphlet that had blown across the deck and saw, for the first time, English. No one around him could help him, though many knew French. Kahinah switched to watching the ones coming out of the hatch. Many could not walk, so they were carried out. It was then that he saw his mother. She was almost a skeleton. Her hair was white too. But it was Suzeeta, and she was looking for him. Maybe it was the hair, or perhaps it was just luck, but they were unlocked